Welcome to September 2017 – It’s time to start “Calling the Mare”

As the last of the crops are gathered in, there used to be a lovely ceremony called Calling the Mare. The farmer all wanted to prove that they had the best reapers, so they tried to gather in the last of their crops before the neighboring farmer did.

The last sheaf of the harvest was used to make a rough mare shape and it was quickly sent round to any farmers who had not finished gathering his crops. It was a way of saying to the farmer that wild horses would be after his crops, if he didn’t gather them quickly. The men would run around to the neighboring farm, throw the mare over the hedge into the field where the other farmer was working, and they would shout Mare! Mare!! and then run away.

The farmer, who received the mare, would then have to work quickly to see if he could finish before another farm did, then he would throw the mare to them
The farmer who was last to finish had to keep the mare all year and have it on display so that everyone knew he had been the slowest farmer of that year.

With four months to the end of the year, it is indeed time to start “Calling the Mare”, to take stock and devise concrete plans to achieve, with resounding success, all the training and career goals you had set out to achieve in 2017.